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September 02, 2010

Wow! I went digging through my un-Raveled and unblogged projects, and wouldn't you know? I found more socks! A friend reminded me today that not sharing projects is really not good for my street cred among knitters. After all, I'm supposed to be this insanely prolific knitter. If I don't have that, I'm just some weirdo with way too much yarn. I'm not OK with that.

Toe up vanilla has been the order of the day for me. As I've posted in the past, I've wandered back to the self-striping wool-blend sock yarns that got me started knitting socks almost ten years ago. There is something soothing about knitting a sock that does the work for you.

Has anyone ever noticed that, to the non-knitter, self-striping socks are the most impressive ones?

My friends and family have long since become accustomed to raiding the "sock boxes" in my laundry room, usually on their birthdays. The boxes are where I keep the random socks that I knit between projects. I tend to keep a pair on the go much of the time. Having small, manageable, no-brainer projects in my pocket can be a handy distraction when I don't know what the next big knit will be. I can rest my brain while I mull over my options for the projects that will be larger commitments.

It seems my brain has had a summer of rest.

I'm getting tired of typing the text, "Toe-up vanilla socks. Worked from my "Toe-ups for the Stubborn" template, magic loop on a 32-inch Addi Turbo. Stockinette with 1x1 ribbed cuff." However, it's a formula that works for me.

I still try to convert the staunchly cuff-down to this method, most notably Ms. Carin of Round the Twist fame. While having Carin (and her remarkably awesome mom Vicki) in my classes at Sock Summit 2009 didn't yield two more toe-uppers, I gained two friends, one of whom even answers to "Ma". So Carin, you can continue to work your beautiful cuff-down socks, but I'll continue to link my projects to your Ravelry group. Consider it a gentle ribbing (perhaps of the 1x1 variety, with a tubular bindoff).

It's business as usual, as I seem to have worked my way down to a 2mm needle for these yarns. Does anyone remember me scoffing at this notion?

It's been a scorcher of a summer here, and I'm not complaining even a little bit.

My response to this is, of course, not to stop knitting. Instead, I like to keep the projects tiny and portable. That can only mean one thing - socks!

Below is only a small sampling of my summertime socks. Several pairs ended up being snatched up by grateful friends before they could be photographed. Still more are secret pairs, samples for a book. It kills me not to share the details, but I will share a few details about that: